02 April 2009

During last year's presidential election, you may recall that I briefly was speculating that Obama would choose Jim Webb as a running mate. I find the guy fascinating. Lately he has been championing the very unpopular issues of prison reform and drug de-criminalization. In a political climate in which most politicians fall all over each other trying to be tougher on crime, Webb is an anomoly.

Criminal justice reform has never been much on my radar, but starting with the jail tax issue last year and continuing to the Pogue Center controversy, I have to say my interest is definitely growing. For example, I was under the impression that the Pogue Center was a locked facility in which offenders serve mandatory time. But apparently that is not how it works at all. Their doors are not locked. This is a bit disconcerting, since they are just a block away from a public swimming pool that we attend often.

Then there is the fact that our Sheriff, Simon Leis, recently closed a minimum security prison in Queensgate, to little noticeable effect. It seems to me that one reason the jail tax failed last year was that it had little specifics in it other than a new jail would be built on the Kahn's site. If the plan had specifics about building and running more secure halfway houses and sex offender rehabilitation programs, maybe it could pass.

Here are some excerpts from Jim Webb's speech on the Senate floor last week:

...We have 5% of the world's population; we have 25% of the world's known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world's greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the average incarceration rate of the rest of the world. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice. . . .

... a significant percentage of those incarcerated are for possession or nonviolent offenses stemming from drug addiction and those sorts of related behavioral issues. . . .

...there are stunning statistics with respect to drugs that we all must come to terms with. African-Americans are about 12% of our population; contrary to a lot of thought and rhetoric, their drug use rate in terms of frequent drug use rate is about the same as all other elements of our society, about 14%. But they end up being 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison by the numbers that have been provided by us. . . .

Another piece of this issue that I hope we will address with this National Criminal Justice Commission is what happens inside our prisons. . . . We also have a situation in this country with respect to prison violence and sexual victimization that is off the charts and we must get our arms around this problem. We also have many people in our prisons who are among what are called the criminally ill, many suffering from hepatitis and HIV who are not getting the sorts of treatment they deserve.

Importantly, what are we going to do about drug policy - the whole area of drug policy in this country?

And how does that affect sentencing procedures and other alternatives that we might look at?

3 comments:

Jim Webb has never been anything less than fascinating. Name another senator who has boxed Oliver North, earned a Navy Cross, or written intelligent military novels. He might actually make some headway with this speech, and I don't think it will cost him re-election, which it most certainly would do in Ohio or Kentucky.